A variety of assays have been developed in which proteins or nucleic acids are captured to particles and then detected, including multiplex assays in which multiple proteins or nucleic acids are captured from a single sample on different sets of distinguishable particles. See, e.g., Kellar and Iannone (2002) “Multiplexed microsphere-based flow cytometric assays” Experimental Hematology 30:1227-1237. The utility of such particle-based assays for high throughput applications has been limited, however, by such factors as the long read times required for typical instruments to process such assays and by the prohibitively high cost of reagents used to detect analytes captured on the particles.
The present invention overcomes the above-noted difficulties and facilitates rapid and inexpensive multiplexed particle-based assays, including highly multiplexed assays of analytes from different samples. A complete understanding of the invention will be obtained upon review of the following.